1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control device for a processing system that performs a predetermined process on an object to be processed, a control method for the processing system, and a storage medium that stores a processing program. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method for controlling transfer of an object to be processed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, most processing systems provided in semiconductor plants include a transfer mechanism that transfers objects to be processed, and two or more processing chambers in which a predetermined process is performed on each object to be processed. In this case, the method of transferring a number of objects to be processed to a plurality of process containers is important to increase the throughput of the processing system and to improve productivity.
Given this, in order to effectively process objects to be processed, a technology has been proposed in which, when a plurality of processing chambers are operating normally, the transfer destination of each object to be processed is determined such that each object to be processed is sequentially transferred to the plurality of processing chambers (hereinafter, a method in which each object to be processed is sequentially transferred to a plurality of processing chambers is also referred to as an OR transfer). If a given processing chamber becomes unable to continue processing, the transfer route is optimized. Thus, when the transfer of an object to be processed to one of the processing chambers is inhibited due to periodic maintenance or occurrence of abnormality in the processing chamber, the object to be processed is transferred to another processing chamber while avoiding the given processing chamber. Thus, a desired process can be performed on each object to be processed by using only a processing chamber (or processing chambers) in operation.